Shattered
by Laura-S
Summary: A single of event has shattered the lives of SG1, and things are about to get worse. AU, angsty, S/D with S/J elements!
1. Chapter One

Title: Shattered  
  
Author: Laura (the artist formerly known as Cookie Monster)  
  
Rating: PG13 for language  
  
Feedback: Makes the world go round. Honest. Trust me, I do English. PLEASE REVIEW!!! or e-mail to trinity8889@hotmail.com.  
  
Disclaimer: You may find this surprising, but I do not own Stargate SG1 or any of the characters associated with it! Sightings of Daniel locked in my wardrobe are sheer speculation, folks. Oh, and Sci-Fi? You can bite me. (Bitter about Farscape? Me? Nooooooo.)  
  
A.N: The exchange in part 2 is, ahem, 'borrowed' from Farscape. Any references to albatrosses (living, or dead!) are taken from Coleridge's 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner.'  
  
This story has been posted previously, but has had to be re-posted due to the fact that I am a techno-idiot! It has also been 100% reworked, so this is the brand spanking new version. Ooooo.  
  
************  
  
Number Twelve cannot remember a life outside of his four dark walls.  
  
He lies curled in a corner, his thin arms wrapped around his thin legs, his eyelids twitching in a sleep that provides no escape, as he no longer has anywhere to escape to. Awake or asleep, conscious or unconscious, every path leads back to this cramped cell and this life; the only one he knows.  
  
He stirs, and his saucer-like blue eyes flicker open. They dominate his features, almost too large for a face that is still handsome, but haunted, so thin that his bones are covered by the merest whisper of flesh, so pale that it is almost luminous in the darkness. In his half-asleep state he reaches out a hand beside him, reaching for someone, something, anything, but like all the other nights, there is nothing there and all that meets his searching hand is the cold floor. His eyes drift shut and he sleeps again, not remembering what he was looking for, not remembering where to find it. Not remembering if it ever really existed at all.  
  
His movement has exposed the skin on his stomach, the lines criss-crossing it barely visible in the darkness. His body is like a roadmap, the marks and lines can be read and followed by touch alone from one end to the other, torturous Braille, with every scar marking a different Test, a different story. The long, thin lines are the roads, justifiable in their precision, their narrow perfection. The hills are the burns on his chest and legs, raised and textured, red and angry. They were just to make him scream, and he did until he couldn't anymore, his mouth open, his vocal chords straining, something inside him, broken, crushed.  
  
On this pitiful roadmap there is only one landmark that is truly his. It lies to the Southwest, and he told them once what it was for, but that was a long time ago, and the memory has faded, even if the scar has not, and now it is just another symbol of what he has become, of the thing they have made him. The man with no name, who doesn't need a name because it wouldn't mean anything, but to whom the number twelve means everything.  
  
Loud footsteps echoing in the long corridor.  
  
His eyes snap open, but he doesn't move, doesn't prepare to fight or run. There is nowhere for him to go, no life outside what they do to him, no desire to escape, because they are coming for him, just for him, and if he were still capable of it he would feel relief. If they come for him then they need him, and it's only when they Test him that he knows he isn't dead, even though he doesn't know if he wishes he was.  
  
So he stays passive as they drag him from his cell, doesn't resist as they position him upright and strap him in, doesn't argue as they place the electrodes on his legs, arms, chest, testicles and on his shaven head. And when the current flows he doesn't even scream, because there is no one to help or hear him. Instead, with a voice that is brittle with disuse he repeats the one word that is the only untainted thing in his life, over and over again, his private mantra, his prayer for a life and time forgotten. He says it again and again until he feels unconsciousness beginning to claim him, throws himself willingly into the void, whispers the word as he falls.  
  
The word Number Twelve whispers, is "Sam." 


	2. Chapter Two

She wakes up and is reaching for the bottle even before she opens her eyes. Fifty percent proof, and it doesn't even burn on the way down anymore. She doesn't feel much of anything.  
  
Today is a special day, so she indulges herself with a second pull from the bottle, and a third, smiling as it begins to work its way into her bloodstream. The first time she had got drunk after it happened had been in the middle of the night. She had woken, screaming, sweating, shaking, sobbing from a nightmare, her ears ringing with his tortured screams, her heart breaking because he'd been crying her name, only to find that the world she awoke into was worse than the one she had left behind, because he wasn't in it at all. So she drank, first to stop hurting, then to stop remembering, now to stop existing. She takes the bottle with her to the bathroom, places it within reach as she brushes her teeth, brushing away the sour taste of old vodka and of old memories. The space on the wall above her sink is empty, the mirror gone, hidden away where she doesn't have to look, hoping that if she doesn't have to look at herself she may not despise herself. If only it were that easy.  
  
When she comes back out there is a light blinking on her answering machine. She almost pushes the erase button immediately, but stops, cradling the bottle, clutching it to her breasts like a rosary. With a hand that is not quite steady, she pushes Play. "Sam? It's Janet. I know we haven't spoken for a while but. but I was just wondering how you were. I know today is difficult. hard for all of us, I just thought that if we could deal with it together it might be easier. Please call, Sam. Cassie misses you. I miss you."  
  
Anger. So much safer than pain. Pushes the ache aside, fills the hollow with bitterness and with darkness and with hate-filled strength. She doesn't want the pain, so she embraces the anger, feels it swallowing her, consuming her, welcomes it as it violates her. She rips the wires out of the back, hurls the machine into the corner. Watches it smash into the wall, watches it fall in pieces to the carpet. Wants to pick it up and destroy it again.  
  
Instead she lies back down on the bed, the bottle to her lips, her eyes closed. She doesn't want to think about it, oh God she doesn't want to, but her mind is fickle and it betrays her, always betrays her, no matter how much she tries to numb it.  
  
When she opens her eyes there is another pair of blue eyes staring right back at her.  
  
She sobs because they are so familiar and so cherished and so missed, and because they are filled with love and passion and sincerity and all the things she hasn't felt in four years, and more because they are filled with him. Just him. And she is so empty without him. All she can do is close her eyes as he speaks, and pretend it's real, and reply like she did when it was, and never want to open her eyes again, just wants to stay in this moment, forever.  
  
"I would be lost without you."  
  
"Then you'll never be lost."  
  
But the pain is too much, the pain is everything, her whole world is hurting, and so she opens her eyes, and reaches for him like she has done so many times before. But he's not there, hasn't been there for four years and she just wants to scream until she can't do anything else, can't think of anything else, can't think of him, but she can't, so she drinks; swallowing greedily, desperately, hoping, praying, to forget. Just to forget.  
  
And as the alcohol takes over, as the oblivion she longs for so desperately beckons, she lies on the bed, this wreck of a woman who should be young but who feels older than time, with the bottle slipping out of her hand and spilling onto the carpet, she both loves and hates the dream of blue eyes and a beloved dead voice whispering her name, and she whispers his in reply.  
  
"Daniel." 


	3. Chapter Three

The man who stands so rigidly at the graveside doesn't notice the wind as it howls mournfully through this place of the dead. The bitter chill of a northern breeze is insignificant to him; his life has been frozen for the last four years.  
  
He hates cemeteries. It's not even as though the box under his feet contains a body, there is nothing to mourn here except a name and a date chipped into a piece of expensive white granite. Nothing to mean anything, except a phrase of a language he wishes he didn't understand. Resurgam; 'I will rise again,' which is fucking ironic because he knows he won't, hopes he won't, knows he won't. Nothing left of the good Doctor, no laughter, no sorrow, no anger. Just the cold empty earth and the smell of decay.  
  
He promises himself each year he won't come. Each year he does anyway.  
  
There are fresh flowers by the tombstone. He doesn't bring anything, no flowers, no Kleenex, no tears. He doesn't have to bend to read the cards to see who they're from, a bunch from Janet and Cassie, a wreath from Hammond. A pretty shitty turnout this year. The day of the funeral, the coffin had been covered in petals, vivid reds, yellows, blues; a last desperate attempt to bring light back into a world that was suddenly much darker. He had watched the brightness being swallowed by the hungry soil, wincing each time a clump had been thrown on the lid, thinking that he couldn't, he really fucking couldn't, but throwing a clump anyway and wanting to scream at the hollow thud it had made. An empty gesture for an empty coffin.  
  
He reaches into his inside pocket, pulls out the photo that has spent the last four years residing over his heart. His cross to bear, the albatross around his neck, his punishment. Just as he didn't want to come today, he really doesn't want to look, but he has to, must do, otherwise how can he remember what he's lost, what he sacrificed?  
  
Friendship.  
  
That's what he sees when he looks at the picture. The blue sky above their heads a world away from the bleakness of today, a better time, a better life, for all of them. He studies his own face first, looking at the laughter lines that have faded because he hasn't got anything to laugh about, sees how happy he was back then, living in hope, living in ignorant bliss. Then he looks at Teal'c. Not smiling, because come on, it's Teal'c and he doesn't do things like that, but with gleaming eyes and his arm firmly around the shoulders of the woman next to him. Sam. The name is bitter in his mind, bitter in his mouth as he nearly says it out loud. She's laughing, her head thrown back, a moment of forgotten joy frozen forever, never to be regained, her hair golden in the sunlight, her hand held securely in the hand of her neighbour, radiant, happy, perfect.  
  
He hates her for being perfect. And for not being his.  
  
The last figure in the photograph, the one holding Sam's hand so tightly, so possessively, although it didn't seem that way at the time, is the one whom he's come to visit today. The one whose tombstone stands at his feet, the one whose name resides in the white granite, the one for whom he has bared the cross of self-loathing for so long. Dr Daniel Jackson, SG1, M.I.A, R.I.P. He stands in the sunlight, and unlike the others he doesn't look at the camera, doesn't look straight ahead. Instead he looks at the woman laughing next to him, looks at her with an expression that is brighter than the sun, even on film. The man wants to reach into the photo and rip his throat out, just for that look alone, because he was supposed to be his best fucking friend, and he was supposed to understand. He was supposed to love his dead wife forever, not love Sam, his Sam, his chance, his redemption, his hope. He wasn't supposed to take her away. He wasn't supposed to leave him with nothing except hate.  
  
It's all his fault.  
  
His hand tenses on the photograph, poised, ready to rip it to shreds, to scatter the pieces along with the memories.  
  
But he doesn't. He can't. Instead he puts it back over his heart, that still beats, must still beat because otherwise Janet would notice, but that stopped loving the moment he had seen them together. Seen the love, seen the happiness, seen the mother-fucking goddamn desperate need she wasn't supposed to feel for anyone but him, and at that moment he knew. He knew whatever she'd felt for him was nothing like what she was feeling now, a teardrop in the ocean, and he knew it would never be enough again; he would never be enough for her ever again. Never had been in the fucking first place.  
  
He'd wanted to kill them both.  
  
But he hadn't. He'd crept away like a wounded animal, bleeding inside his unfeeling heart, and he hadn't said anything, hadn't done anything, but now he saw all the looks and glances, all the brushing of hands when they thought he wasn't looking. He saw their love like a burning light, and he was left alone in the frozen darkness with the light searing his eyeballs, destroying him from within.  
  
He hated them.  
  
He hated himself for hating them.  
  
And his hatred destroyed them all. 


	4. Chapter Four

He's back at the base now, his duty done for another year, the hate overshadowed by guilt, the guilt overshadowed by relief because he made it through, had to make it through. Now he doesn't have to go back for another year, fifty two weeks, three hundred and sixty five days, when he can put it at the back of his mind, and only think about it when he wakes screaming at four in the morning, or when he looks in the mirror and hates what he sees. Until then, he can forget.  
  
Or he can pretend he does. He's gotten good at pretending.  
  
He sits in the office he truly doesn't think of as being his, with the comfy leather chair and the all important bat-phone on the desk, and the litre of whisky resting with its solitary glass in the top right-hand desk drawer. The office may not truly be his, will always be Hammond's in his mind, but still, it is his home as much as any other. He spends more time here than he does in the anonymous two up, two down shell he bought after he could no longer stand the thought of her, of them, sitting on his old couch, watching hockey, drinking beer, talking, laughing.  
  
Betraying him with every breath and every smile.  
  
Now he puts in eighteen hour days, and most of that is for paperwork, all piles of bullshit that land on his desk with annoying regularity, and that he just wants to put in the shredder straight away, but he can't because that was the old Jack, and this is the all singing, all dancing new General Jack, who doesn't do things like that. General Jack, who drinks whisky instead of beer, who talks instead of fights, and who gets to speak to the man with his finger on the big red button at least once a month.  
  
He deserves to be miserable, so that's what he is.  
  
He picks a file at random from the pile on the desk, flicks through it without really seeing the pages. Puts it down again with a snap and a sigh. Longs to be neck deep in Goa'uld, ankle deep, hell, even toe deep would do. Anything but on this base, on this day, with this life.  
  
Then, almost at once, he remembers the saying about being careful what you wish for.  
  
The klaxons have just gone off.  
  
************  
  
In control now, in command, the weight of memories forcibly shoved aside, the albatross sinking 'like lead into the sea' as he strides through to the Command Centre, moving to stand behind the Tech whose fingers dance over the computer keyboard, eyes fixed nervously to the screen. "We have Off- world activation. Incoming traveller." The sirens are making a banshee wail in his ear, a wall of noise that fills his head, and he makes a slit throat gesture with his hand, and almost immediately they are dampened, silenced. Now he can hear himself think, he follows the Book to the letter, and asks the question he already knows the answer to. "Anyone due back?"  
  
"Negative, Sir. Only SG9 and 11 are off-world, and they're not due until tomorrow." The Tech's hands are shaking now, the adrenaline rush filling his bloodstream. "Lock it up." The seventh and final chevron clunks into place, and for a moment the air is alive with a rush of colour, movement, sound, as the infinite porthole opens. There is hardly time to marvel at the wonder of it, before the translucent surface is covered by the heavy metal iris, the shield against the might of the universe.  
  
For a moment there is silence except the humming of the machines. He has the urge to drop something, just to see how high he can make the Tech jump, but then he remembers that this is meant to be serious, this is meant to be It, the whole enchilada, life or death, and he really can't decide which one he dreads the most.  
  
Beeping interrupting his train of thought, the Tech's shoulders relaxing slightly, although you could still string a piano wire between them, as he announces what a glance at the computer screen has already confirmed. "Sir, we're receiving an incoming transmission. It's the Tok'ra."  
  
He's saying "Open it up" even as he walks out of the door. He heads towards the Gate room to meet his visitors, because he's a diplomat now, and he can kiss ass with the best of them, but more than that because he wants to know what the hell they want, and how long they can stay, a barrier of distraction between him and his memories, and the Ghost of Four Years Past who follows in his every footstep like a shadow.  
  
He makes it to the bottom of the ramp just as the first traveller comes through, the surface of the Stargate rippling like water.  
  
Jacob. It hits him in the stomach, the air rushing from his lungs as he sees the man he once so jokingly, seriously, jokingly called Dad step through the Gate. Right at that moment he begins to wish that he had screwed being a diplomat and retired instead, where he could watch hockey all day and look at the stars all night, and not have to avoid eyes that glow and familiar gestures that scream at him with her voice. Jacob opens his mouth to say something, a greeting, a warning? but doesn't even get the words out before the next travellers arrive.  
  
Jack stands and wonders how the sound of his world collapsing could be so quiet.  
  
There's a dead man in the room with him.  
  
And he's breathing. 


	5. Chapter Five

A.N The reviews I've added are from the last time the story was posted; before I screwed it up! Thanks to all the people that did (and have) reviewed, your comments are what keeps me going! Laura  
  
************  
  
She wants to scream.  
  
She wants to weep, wail, sob, roar her pain at the world until it, somebody, anybody, listens.  
  
She wants to find the bastards that did this and she wants to rip them to shreds with her bare hands, but not before making them beg and making them writhe and making them plead for mercy.  
  
She wants to curl up in the corner and be rocked like a child and be told everything will be all right.  
  
She wants to open her eyes and find the last four years haven't happened.  
  
Instead she watches him breathe.  
  
Such a small thing, a tiny motor function that is performed countless times a day, inhale, exhale, easy as that, but, still, she can't tear her eyes away from the rise and fall of his chest, can hardly bear to blink. The movement hypnotises her, lulls her, comforts her. The pain is still there, oh God it's still there, right under the surface, and so is the anger, but as long as his chest keeps moving, up and down, in and out, she can deal with it, has to deal with it because her tears, even if they're a flood, won't help him. She has to do her job and see this man as her patient and not as her friend, but it's hard, it's so damn hard, when all she wants to do is hold his hand and make everything better and never let anyone hurt him ever again.  
  
She hadn't known who he was.  
  
The call had come in from the Gate room and she had gone, oblivious, unsuspecting, and she had been shocked, repelled, disgusted at the sight of this man broken beyond belief, a sack of battered skin and broken bone. It was only when she had looked over and seen Jack's face, pale and shocked, and so had looked, really looked, at the man they were carrying, that she had seen a man she had already buried. She had looked again and had seen the same thing.  
  
She had bitten her lip, hard enough to make it bleed, just to stop herself, from screaming, from calling out his name, from crying, from doing God knows what, and with the taste of copper hot in her mouth she had got him to the infirmary, got him stabilised, got him comfortable, got him safe.  
  
Her mouth's still bleeding but there's nothing left for her to do, at least for now, all the tests done, all the labs back, the horrific truth in black and white, and that's why she watches him breathe.  
  
Don't think. Don't think about it.  
  
Don't think about the burns, the scars, don't think about all the times he must have called out for help and found no-one, don't think about the rescue mission that never came, don't think about the fact he was probably being tortured even as they buried his coffin, don't think that there must have been something, anything they could have done, if only someone had tried, really tried.  
  
Just don't think at all.  
  
Just watch him breathe.  
  
"Doctor? Doctor Frasier? The General would like to see you in his office."  
  
"Tell him I'll be there when I'm done here."  
  
Her voice seems to come from a long way away, can't possibly be her talking in such a calm voice when on the inside there's just a permanent scream, can't possibly sound so detached when she can't take her eyes off his breathing. Can't possibly sound so goddamn normal when her world is shifting around her.  
  
"He insisted, Ma'am. Said it was urgent."  
  
She nods because it is expected, but she can't leave without touching his face. Virtually unrecognisable, yes, but warm, real, alive. Alive. Her hand is shaking. She pulls it back, curls the fingers into her palm, tries to hold onto the warmth she felt beneath her touch. Tries to tell herself that that's enough, for now, even as she whispers to him in a voice she hardly recognises as her own.  
  
"We missed you."  
  
And it's the truth, the simple, honest truth that makes her heart break, even as she walks away. 


End file.
